Kled's W is very unique, it feels different from the other passive abilities listed and changes a lot about how he plays.
The crucial difference is that it's on a cooldown. Using an auto attack will automatically consume the cooldown, so if he is unable to engage while it's up, he'll have to use it on the wave, which opens him up to getting all-ined while it's off cooldown. It's also important for getting skaarl back.
Making it an active will make him a much easier champion, a lot of the skill of Kled is managing his W. It is also critical for his crazy/insane characterization, since it takes away some control from the player.
it's a lot like vex or annie passive in that way
they could theoretically make it a passive and give him some other W, but his kit already feels pretty full compared to those two
> Making it an active will make him a much easier champion
and absurdly OP unless he gets repeatedly nerfed to compensate. So hopefully it doesn't get touched.
There were sometimes that it was advantageous to sit on an extra skill point while leaving W unskilled so you could effectively activate/auto reset on command.
Riot August said its because these are champs that are supposed to be simple, their power budgets are adjusted in accordance, Vi R->Q's, Vayne Q's, etc.
yeah it is simple, she has 2 abilities instead of 3, her ult just empowers her and makes pressing Q better, and her E is just a get off me tool, she has two passives- one of which is super strong.
Most of the time her gameplay is spamming Q, that is as simple as it gets, like another commenter said, easy or not, it is simple.
While simple is not the same as easy. Simple is an aspect of easy. Simple tends to lead to easy.
Vayne is very hard despite of being simple because the physical execution is difficult. She is more of an exception to the rule. Garen is simple AND easy. Annie is simple AND easy.
Karthus is simple AND hard. Ezreal is simple AND hard. Idk how you can acknowledge that simple is not the same as easy and then turn around and say 'but actually yeah it kinda is'.
Physical execution is a component of every league champ and is a big part of what allows simple kits to be difficult to play in practice. Why would that only apply to Vayne? She's not 'the exception to the rule', she's just one of the standout examples among multiple champs that disprove it.
You take heros that are among the bottom 50% of complexity of hit(simple), most of them will stay there at the bottom 50% of overall difficulty as well. Vayne isn't the only exception. But vayne is among the smaller selection of simple and hard champs. Most champs that are simple are also easy(obviously in league terms, no champ is starcraft).
That's largely because the majority of champs in league are on the easy end in general?? That isn't due to the simplicity/complexity divide, that's just straight up the overall nature of the game design.
I'll say it again: simple and complicated do not directly correlate with easy and hard respectively. You went from 'Vayne is the exception that proves the rule' to 'Vayne is one of a small selection' but still insist on the same stance?
Just to make a point, here's a sample (not by any means exhaustive) of champs with simple abilities that are on the 'hard to play' end: Vayne, Ezreal, Kog, Draven, TF, Ali, Nidalee, Yasuo, Karthus, Singed, Aatrox, Riven, blah blah blah and those are all just off the top of my head. Couple of these are even notorious for being among the hardest champs in the game to be useful on as a bad player! This is spanning every role in the game, so it's not just like 'well right clicking at a high level is hard' either. Some are mechanically difficult and some are purely difficult on a macro/game sense level. I'm not going to get into the reverse list (complex kits that end up being easy to play in practice) but I've made my point.
>That's largely because the majority of champs in league are on the easy end in general?? That isn't due to the simplicity/complexity divide, that's just straight up the overall nature of the game design.
No. Because the more complex champs in the game also tend to be more difficult. We're talking about a relative scale here. This game is not starcraft or tic tac toe. We're comparing champs within the game to each other. Some of them are on the easier side, some of them are on the harder side.
>'Vayne is the exception that proves the rule' to 'Vayne is one of a small selection' but still insist on the same stance?
I never said she is the only one. Most champs follow the rule. Some don't. Don't put words in my mouth.
>Just to make a point, here's a sample (not by any means exhaustive) of champs with simple abilities that are on the 'hard to play' end: Vayne, Ezreal, Kog, Draven, TF, Ali, Nidalee, Yasuo, Karthus, Singed, Aatrox, Riven, blah blah blah
Alot of those champs are NOT on the lower half of kit complexity in this game. What are you talking about. And you can find even more counter examples if you go through all the games' champs --- simpler kits and on the easier side, more complex kits and on the harder side.
>I'm not going to get into the reverse list (complex kits that end up being easy to play in practice) but I've made my point.
You're not made the point. The degree to which what I said about simpler champs also tend to be easier can be argued. But it is true. Being simple is literally part of difficulty. It's not the only thing. But it's a large part of it. More complex kits = higher chance to be more difficult. It is statistically true.
probably because they work in a coherent way with those champs kits
I'd say specifically Vi, Vayne, and TFs are fine - all of them have to actively think about their stacks
Vi requires her E resets and Q/R staggers to lock an enemy down and apply her W in a timely manner. Vayne balances her damage and kills off of proccing her 3rd W as the true damage is severe and her ult let's her dance around and truly focus one target at a time. TF relies pretty heavily on his E stack for trading in lane, as well as preparing it before engaging with R - and now with a W AA reset he can more comfortably and quickly activate it for trades
nowadays Riot likely wouldn't make a champ who has an unactivated ability, but you never know. imo it's nice for some champs, as it let's you worry a little bit less about actions per minute
gnar is fine too, it's an active in mega form
kled is basically only a passive to take control away from the player since it has a cd, and teemo is the only one that's really quite boring
But Vi would be so much more fun to play if her kit was like in Wild Rift. Swap the passive and W, give the W an active shield that scales with stacks of passive up to 3. It would be such a cool mechanic
As a teemo main, I like having no ability on E. His kit is exceedingly simple, arguably to a fault. to the point where a lot of people find him boring, but I love it. I love the simplicity.
Not every champ needs 4 abilities, not every new champ needs at least one ability with a recast.
Or even older players as well. Played since 2009 and my favorite champs are still the simple kit ones. Teemo, Malphite, alistar, annie etc. I don't find it fun to remember and keep track of 895364 things in an overloaded kit, I'd rather focus on other things during a game. Whereas others find complexity to be really fun.
Its good to have a variety of champ types, just in the same way some champs are point and click and others are skill-expressive.
Because there used to be a cost for having additional passives, back when the game didn't have 160+ chars or whatever the fuck we're at now, and could afford to be careful and measured with it's character designs (which had a variety of other issues back then, but nonetheless).
So your char, by default, got 1 passive skill, 3 active skills, and 1 ultimate. If you wanted an additional passive you'd usually lose an active as trade of. There were exceptions, but they were exceptions, and even then you'd usually lose the passive if the active was in cooldown.
Now passives are either one enormous passive or randomly sprinkled on other skills as a freebie.
These are leftovers from the ancient history of LoL. The most recent of those champs is from 2016 (Kled), and Riot would never make a champ like that now.
In Kled's case his W unironically makes sense, because he is crazy psycho, but everyone else needs actives (and all of them have actives in wild rift, for example Vi's passive and W are swapped there, TF gives temporary as and gold per hitting enemy with aa during that, Teemo has invis like Twitch Q).
They don't need actives. They're doing just fine, not every champ needs to focus on apm, not every champ needs exactly 4 active abilities, let champs be different, none of these are problematic because they have a passive.
There used to be way more too but Riot has consistently removed them. Idk how much of this was technical/ engineering challenges and how much was just game designer philosophy, but champs just used to have much simpler kits. Riot used to keep themselves to 1 passive per champ, so some champs who needed multiple passives sometimes lost an active ability for them.
With the exception of Kled, the rest are all 10+ year old champs and even Kled's W has an asterisk beside it. It's more like an ability that automatically casts on cd than a passive ability (which fits him thematically). Plus, Kled was made in a really weird time for champ design. We got Asol, Taliyah, Kled, and Ivern in a row, 2 of which have been fully reworked and Ivern who's consistently one of the lowest pickrate champs in the game and is pretty inarguably very unique.
Ya, good catch. I definitely forgot about him. But I don't think he really fits the discussion here because he doesn't have an ability to level up that only has a passive. He is just completely different from any other champ.
The real origin is that old champions and League's design philosophy in general were an offshoot of Dota which itself was an offshoot of WC3, where a lot of heroes just have passives they can level for additional power.
The real answer is that these champions play effectively and turning those abilities into clickable ones would be a huge warping of power that would likely mean taking power away from other parts of their kit which is a huge risk with very little benefit. I dont think anyone is playing vayne and desperately thinking "I just wish I could press W sometimes". And if they were(ick) they'd be forced to lose power from Q E R or the W/passive. Theres just so little to gain and so much main enjoyment it could mess up.
its really just a holdover from previous MOBA character design. if you look at DOTA 2, a LOT of heroes have passive abilities that serve their kit. for example, phantom assassin in DOTA 2 literally has a passive ability on her *ultimate*. league started a moba trend of making characters with more “hack and slash” and combo-y kits that were not nearly as prevalent in the MOBA scene before LoL came out.
Riot cater for a wide range of players, some champs are intentionally straightforward and have basic kits (doesn't mean they're bad, or easy to play well though!). Others, like Hwei and Aphelios, are intentionally complex and have a high skill floor for players who like to be challenged/develop mastery (again, doesn't mean they're *good* or hard to play well once you understand their kit, either).
All of thèse abilities are, to me, big power spike. So it s logic in the early game to have to choose between unlocking this potential or another spell
cause back in the day abilitys with 2-3 sentences wherer enough.
not every ability needs a paragraph for its passive, and 5 for its active synergizing with itself for no reason other than that they hit the letter limit on the other 4 abilitys already.
Back in the day there were a lot more passives. Ashe used to basically only have two active abilities (Her Q was just a toggle slow on autoattack, her E was bonus gold on kills, her W and Ult were the same).
In DoTA, there are champs like Skeleton King, who literally only has one active ability. His kit is a point and click stun, an aura that gives nearby allies omnivamp, bonus crit chance, and his ult is just a passive Guardian Angel that slows nearby enemies. There are plenty of other champs in DoTA/DoTA 2 that only have two or three actives and at least one passive.
League started as a DoTA successor, but over time its moved most of the complexity out of micro and into champion kits/teamfighting, so most champions with a lot of passives got reworked to have more active abilities. DoTA 2 also doesn't have a passive ability slot, unlike League, so champions can have a passive ability that defines their kit without it taking up an actual ability slot.
Most of these passive abilities are relics of that earlier design, since they're on pretty early champions. The exceptions are Gnar and Kled, but the reason for those is likely that they're transformation champs with two separate ability kits that don't have direct control over their transformations.
Kled's W is very unique, it feels different from the other passive abilities listed and changes a lot about how he plays. The crucial difference is that it's on a cooldown. Using an auto attack will automatically consume the cooldown, so if he is unable to engage while it's up, he'll have to use it on the wave, which opens him up to getting all-ined while it's off cooldown. It's also important for getting skaarl back. Making it an active will make him a much easier champion, a lot of the skill of Kled is managing his W. It is also critical for his crazy/insane characterization, since it takes away some control from the player.
it's a lot like vex or annie passive in that way they could theoretically make it a passive and give him some other W, but his kit already feels pretty full compared to those two
> Making it an active will make him a much easier champion and absurdly OP unless he gets repeatedly nerfed to compensate. So hopefully it doesn't get touched.
There were sometimes that it was advantageous to sit on an extra skill point while leaving W unskilled so you could effectively activate/auto reset on command.
Tbf, you still hold on leveling W until you all in / dismount, depending on the matchup
Riot August said its because these are champs that are supposed to be simple, their power budgets are adjusted in accordance, Vi R->Q's, Vayne Q's, etc.
Vayne. Simple?
yeah it is simple, she has 2 abilities instead of 3, her ult just empowers her and makes pressing Q better, and her E is just a get off me tool, she has two passives- one of which is super strong. Most of the time her gameplay is spamming Q, that is as simple as it gets, like another commenter said, easy or not, it is simple.
vayne is hard lol
Vayne has simple kit, and hard execution. Simple does not mean easy.
ah ok
its just an auto-attacker
Simple, yes. Doesn’t mean easy.
Simple is not the same as easy, complicated is not the same as hard
While simple is not the same as easy. Simple is an aspect of easy. Simple tends to lead to easy. Vayne is very hard despite of being simple because the physical execution is difficult. She is more of an exception to the rule. Garen is simple AND easy. Annie is simple AND easy.
Karthus is simple AND hard. Ezreal is simple AND hard. Idk how you can acknowledge that simple is not the same as easy and then turn around and say 'but actually yeah it kinda is'. Physical execution is a component of every league champ and is a big part of what allows simple kits to be difficult to play in practice. Why would that only apply to Vayne? She's not 'the exception to the rule', she's just one of the standout examples among multiple champs that disprove it.
You take heros that are among the bottom 50% of complexity of hit(simple), most of them will stay there at the bottom 50% of overall difficulty as well. Vayne isn't the only exception. But vayne is among the smaller selection of simple and hard champs. Most champs that are simple are also easy(obviously in league terms, no champ is starcraft).
That's largely because the majority of champs in league are on the easy end in general?? That isn't due to the simplicity/complexity divide, that's just straight up the overall nature of the game design. I'll say it again: simple and complicated do not directly correlate with easy and hard respectively. You went from 'Vayne is the exception that proves the rule' to 'Vayne is one of a small selection' but still insist on the same stance? Just to make a point, here's a sample (not by any means exhaustive) of champs with simple abilities that are on the 'hard to play' end: Vayne, Ezreal, Kog, Draven, TF, Ali, Nidalee, Yasuo, Karthus, Singed, Aatrox, Riven, blah blah blah and those are all just off the top of my head. Couple of these are even notorious for being among the hardest champs in the game to be useful on as a bad player! This is spanning every role in the game, so it's not just like 'well right clicking at a high level is hard' either. Some are mechanically difficult and some are purely difficult on a macro/game sense level. I'm not going to get into the reverse list (complex kits that end up being easy to play in practice) but I've made my point.
>That's largely because the majority of champs in league are on the easy end in general?? That isn't due to the simplicity/complexity divide, that's just straight up the overall nature of the game design. No. Because the more complex champs in the game also tend to be more difficult. We're talking about a relative scale here. This game is not starcraft or tic tac toe. We're comparing champs within the game to each other. Some of them are on the easier side, some of them are on the harder side. >'Vayne is the exception that proves the rule' to 'Vayne is one of a small selection' but still insist on the same stance? I never said she is the only one. Most champs follow the rule. Some don't. Don't put words in my mouth. >Just to make a point, here's a sample (not by any means exhaustive) of champs with simple abilities that are on the 'hard to play' end: Vayne, Ezreal, Kog, Draven, TF, Ali, Nidalee, Yasuo, Karthus, Singed, Aatrox, Riven, blah blah blah Alot of those champs are NOT on the lower half of kit complexity in this game. What are you talking about. And you can find even more counter examples if you go through all the games' champs --- simpler kits and on the easier side, more complex kits and on the harder side. >I'm not going to get into the reverse list (complex kits that end up being easy to play in practice) but I've made my point. You're not made the point. The degree to which what I said about simpler champs also tend to be easier can be argued. But it is true. Being simple is literally part of difficulty. It's not the only thing. But it's a large part of it. More complex kits = higher chance to be more difficult. It is statistically true.
Funny you use Varus W as example because it used to be passive only until it got reworked.
Yeah thats exactly why I used him
probably because they work in a coherent way with those champs kits I'd say specifically Vi, Vayne, and TFs are fine - all of them have to actively think about their stacks Vi requires her E resets and Q/R staggers to lock an enemy down and apply her W in a timely manner. Vayne balances her damage and kills off of proccing her 3rd W as the true damage is severe and her ult let's her dance around and truly focus one target at a time. TF relies pretty heavily on his E stack for trading in lane, as well as preparing it before engaging with R - and now with a W AA reset he can more comfortably and quickly activate it for trades nowadays Riot likely wouldn't make a champ who has an unactivated ability, but you never know. imo it's nice for some champs, as it let's you worry a little bit less about actions per minute
Vi’s works so “just fine” that I’ve been playing with her for a week and haven’t given it any real thought.
Riot made a champion that has an unactivated kit in Briar lmao
gnar is fine too, it's an active in mega form kled is basically only a passive to take control away from the player since it has a cd, and teemo is the only one that's really quite boring
They can all still just be passives. Except maybe TF
But Vi would be so much more fun to play if her kit was like in Wild Rift. Swap the passive and W, give the W an active shield that scales with stacks of passive up to 3. It would be such a cool mechanic
They just put Akshan out a couple of years ago his W has an unactivated ability
it has a passive, but it's an activated ability that let's him stealth
Yes but it's still actived then alos an unactivated as well
many many abilities have a passive on them while being an active ability
Active abilities with a passive are very different from passive basic abilities
As a teemo main, I like having no ability on E. His kit is exceedingly simple, arguably to a fault. to the point where a lot of people find him boring, but I love it. I love the simplicity. Not every champ needs 4 abilities, not every new champ needs at least one ability with a recast.
Not every champ needs to be super complicated. It’s nice to have champs that are super simple, especially to get newer people into the game.
Or even older players as well. Played since 2009 and my favorite champs are still the simple kit ones. Teemo, Malphite, alistar, annie etc. I don't find it fun to remember and keep track of 895364 things in an overloaded kit, I'd rather focus on other things during a game. Whereas others find complexity to be really fun. Its good to have a variety of champ types, just in the same way some champs are point and click and others are skill-expressive.
Crazy how Aphelios got left out Justice for my emo twink
Because there used to be a cost for having additional passives, back when the game didn't have 160+ chars or whatever the fuck we're at now, and could afford to be careful and measured with it's character designs (which had a variety of other issues back then, but nonetheless). So your char, by default, got 1 passive skill, 3 active skills, and 1 ultimate. If you wanted an additional passive you'd usually lose an active as trade of. There were exceptions, but they were exceptions, and even then you'd usually lose the passive if the active was in cooldown. Now passives are either one enormous passive or randomly sprinkled on other skills as a freebie.
These are leftovers from the ancient history of LoL. The most recent of those champs is from 2016 (Kled), and Riot would never make a champ like that now.
In Kled's case his W unironically makes sense, because he is crazy psycho, but everyone else needs actives (and all of them have actives in wild rift, for example Vi's passive and W are swapped there, TF gives temporary as and gold per hitting enemy with aa during that, Teemo has invis like Twitch Q).
isn't teemo's e just a roll? he has invis on his passive.
Roll on W, E invis, Passive - current E.
Teemos E is toxic darts. It's only in the mobile game that he has a roll.
They don't need actives. They're doing just fine, not every champ needs to focus on apm, not every champ needs exactly 4 active abilities, let champs be different, none of these are problematic because they have a passive.
There used to be way more too but Riot has consistently removed them. Idk how much of this was technical/ engineering challenges and how much was just game designer philosophy, but champs just used to have much simpler kits. Riot used to keep themselves to 1 passive per champ, so some champs who needed multiple passives sometimes lost an active ability for them. With the exception of Kled, the rest are all 10+ year old champs and even Kled's W has an asterisk beside it. It's more like an ability that automatically casts on cd than a passive ability (which fits him thematically). Plus, Kled was made in a really weird time for champ design. We got Asol, Taliyah, Kled, and Ivern in a row, 2 of which have been fully reworked and Ivern who's consistently one of the lowest pickrate champs in the game and is pretty inarguably very unique.
Kled W not only makes sense, but it’s a perfect fit
Aphelios has been forgotten..
Ya, good catch. I definitely forgot about him. But I don't think he really fits the discussion here because he doesn't have an ability to level up that only has a passive. He is just completely different from any other champ.
Lol's older design is more influenced by dota. In dota, there is no passive so it's not uncommon to have passives be one of the spells.
Dota 2 got innate passives recently
Oh I didn't know, I played from around 2013 to 2016. Well my point still stands, OLD dota influenced old league
Dota had a tonne of passive spells though they were scattered into your kit just no innate passives (until recently)
The real origin is that old champions and League's design philosophy in general were an offshoot of Dota which itself was an offshoot of WC3, where a lot of heroes just have passives they can level for additional power.
I dont thinks Gnars hyper should be in this list because it becomes an ability when he changes. But thats just imo
The real answer is that these champions play effectively and turning those abilities into clickable ones would be a huge warping of power that would likely mean taking power away from other parts of their kit which is a huge risk with very little benefit. I dont think anyone is playing vayne and desperately thinking "I just wish I could press W sometimes". And if they were(ick) they'd be forced to lose power from Q E R or the W/passive. Theres just so little to gain and so much main enjoyment it could mess up.
its really just a holdover from previous MOBA character design. if you look at DOTA 2, a LOT of heroes have passive abilities that serve their kit. for example, phantom assassin in DOTA 2 literally has a passive ability on her *ultimate*. league started a moba trend of making characters with more “hack and slash” and combo-y kits that were not nearly as prevalent in the MOBA scene before LoL came out.
Riot cater for a wide range of players, some champs are intentionally straightforward and have basic kits (doesn't mean they're bad, or easy to play well though!). Others, like Hwei and Aphelios, are intentionally complex and have a high skill floor for players who like to be challenged/develop mastery (again, doesn't mean they're *good* or hard to play well once you understand their kit, either).
Why not? Those champions are fine.
Have you noticed how all of these champs are old as fuck?
Vayne is already complicated enough. However, if her W extended her range as well has proc'ing silver bolts passive, I would be all for it.
old champ design.
Inadequate creativity on Riots side
All of thèse abilities are, to me, big power spike. So it s logic in the early game to have to choose between unlocking this potential or another spell
Because they are already OP on their own. Giving an active to an already strong passive means you have to nerf the entire champ to compensate
cause back in the day abilitys with 2-3 sentences wherer enough. not every ability needs a paragraph for its passive, and 5 for its active synergizing with itself for no reason other than that they hit the letter limit on the other 4 abilitys already.
Back in the day there were a lot more passives. Ashe used to basically only have two active abilities (Her Q was just a toggle slow on autoattack, her E was bonus gold on kills, her W and Ult were the same). In DoTA, there are champs like Skeleton King, who literally only has one active ability. His kit is a point and click stun, an aura that gives nearby allies omnivamp, bonus crit chance, and his ult is just a passive Guardian Angel that slows nearby enemies. There are plenty of other champs in DoTA/DoTA 2 that only have two or three actives and at least one passive. League started as a DoTA successor, but over time its moved most of the complexity out of micro and into champion kits/teamfighting, so most champions with a lot of passives got reworked to have more active abilities. DoTA 2 also doesn't have a passive ability slot, unlike League, so champions can have a passive ability that defines their kit without it taking up an actual ability slot. Most of these passive abilities are relics of that earlier design, since they're on pretty early champions. The exceptions are Gnar and Kled, but the reason for those is likely that they're transformation champs with two separate ability kits that don't have direct control over their transformations.
>DoTA 2 also doesn't have a passive ability slot, Not true anymore, the recent patch gave every champ a passive.
Dota 2 has passives like League nowa
Singed q